


Promising Young Things

by ChipAndDealer



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Astrid Has to Hide Toothless, Broken Promises, Gen, Hiccup dies against the Nightmare, Hiccup was much better at understanding dragons than Astrid, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22339849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChipAndDealer/pseuds/ChipAndDealer
Summary: No one knows who threw the axe, or at least, no one admitted to knowing. Maybe Spitelout, jealous at his son's not becoming chief, or Astrid's own father, furious at her not being picked for the honor of slaying her first dragon in the ring, maybe Loki himself threw it as a cruel joke, it didn't matter.The axe struck the agitated nightmare, and whatever Hiccup was about to say was suddenly drowned out by the sound of the flames.
Relationships: Astrid Hofferson & Toothless
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39





	1. Something Goes Wrong

Hiccup's promises were a lot like his inventions, in that they were mostly useless clutter everyone on the island had dealt with too much. It wasn't that he tried to lie, it was just circumstances always seemed to arrange themselves in such a way they kept being broken and he either didn't have the strength to stop it or couldn't see that it was happening in time to prevent it.

"If something goes wrong, just make sure they don't find Toothless." Astrid looked up at his face, pleading eyes trying to meet her own. She'd known for a day that everything they knew of dragons was wrong. She'd known for a day where Hiccup went most afternoons, where he'd learned all those tricks that had so infuriated her before. She'd known for a day what Hiccup truly had to lose if Toothless was discovered.

"I will." She'd known for a day, and he was entrusting his best friend's life to her. For a moment, she thought it might have been because of his crush, this trust in her, but when the moment passed she knew it was really because he had no other choice. If he disappointed his father, the village, even if he died, Hiccup wanted his friend safe. It was crazy, putting a dragon's life above his own, but that was Hiccup. "Just promise me it won't go wrong."

He hesitated, knowing just how dangerous what he was about to try would be.

"Hiccup?" She pressed, hearing Gobber's mismatched footsteps grow closer.

Slowly, he nodded, eyes showing the fear he couldn't bring himself to voice. "I promise, Astrid."

He promised, but Hiccups promises were a lot like he was.

"It's time, Hiccup. Knock 'em dead," Gobber said, and Hiccup turned and walked into the arena, the gate shutting behind him with a tense thud.

They tried their best, but always seemed to come up short, somehow.

"It's okay, it's okay." Hiccup slowly crept toward the anxious Nightmare, his shield and dagger thrown to the side. Every eye on the island was watching him at that moment.

No one knows who threw the axe, or at least, no one admitted to knowing. Maybe Spitelout, jealous at his son's not becoming chief, or Astrid's own father, furious at her not being picked for the honor of slaying her first dragon in the ring, maybe Loki himself threw it as a cruel joke, it didn't matter.

The axe struck the agitated nightmare, and whatever Hiccup was about to say was suddenly drowned out by the sound of the flames. Words turned into screams, bones to charcoal, and skin into a sickening burning smell. Hiccup was dead before his charred remains could hit the ground.

What happened after was a blur of killing the nightmare, futilely checking for any signs of life, and attending the funeral for the boy who she'd seen countless times, but only really knew for one day.

How do you remember a person like that?

For vikings, it was their deeds, their accomplishments, their victories against all odds, but Hiccup had none. He was only a boy.

The funeral was quiet. No songs, no grand speeches, and seeing the arrow fly, lighting Hiccup aflame once again, Astrid couldn't help feeling sick. She was sure she imagined the smell returning, and the scream was just the air popping out of the burning wood, but it didn't matter.

Astrid slipped away from the funeral early. She knew Hiccup's legacy wouldn't be found there. Three days after Hiccup's death, she made her way to Toothless' cove.

Hiccup always took fish in the afternoons, so she thought it would be appropriate to do the same. The basket felt odd, strapped to her back as she made her way into the forest. It wasn't overly heavy; even Hiccup could carry it. Still, the only thing she'd ever carried on her back was a shield, and that was definitely... different.

She laughed, hollowly. There were a lot of things Hiccup did that were different.

Astrid wasn't sure what she expected, picking her way down the slope into the cove, but she didn't expect to see Toothless sitting motionless, staring at her approach. She didn't expect him to know.

"Hiccup is dead," she informed the massive black dragon, the words more bitter in her mouth than the foulest of medicines.

Toothless closed his eyes, and there was a rumble in his chest. She didn't know the meaning, Hiccup probably would have, but so far her interactions with dragons had amounted to her trying not to die to them.

Her stomach lurched, seeing Hiccup's last moments in her mind's eye. Unable to contain it any more, she faced away from Toothless and retched into the grass.

After a few moments of that, she felt a weight on her back as Toothless gently laid his wing on top of her. Throat rough with bile, pain and loss squirming in her veins like her blood was replaced with eels, she leveled a glare at the beast.

"Don't touch me," she seethed, batting his wing away. "Don't ever touch me." What once was a whisper had graduated to a shout, and the Night Fury moved backward at the force of her anger. She jabbed an accusatory finger in his direction, expression contorting with hate. "It was one of you that killed him, you dragons," she spat the word like it was vile. "He could have stayed in the forge and made weapons and armor, he could have stayed inside, safe, but you had to screw it up." She was crying now, but the words couldn't stop. "You're always this untouchable prize, but Hiccup comes along and he gets to know you, and just when you start to get to know him too he goes and..." the words warped, becoming garbled with her sobs, and Astrid collapsed onto her knees.

She sat and cried for a while, throat still burning from earlier, and Toothless was quiet, more still than she'd ever known him to be. After some time, her breathing began to steady, and her eyes began to clear from the blurriness the tears provided.

There was a shift, when Toothless finally moved and Astrid started at the sound. His tail dragged slowly across the sand until it was in front of her, and she saw the leather replacement for one half of it, straps and rods of metal trailing behind it due to some recent break. Astrid turned to look at the dragon's face, and it twitched from her to the tail, expectantly.

She reached out, almost touching it but stopping herself short. "I can't fix this," she sniffled, hand falling to her side. "I'm not Hiccup."

His chest rumbled again, the same as before, and she didn't even attempt to understand it.

Astrid wiped her eyes, standing up slowly and turning to begin the trek back to Berk when a sound from Toothless stopped her. It wasn't the rumble, or the roar common in training, the best way to describe it would be a coo. Looking at the dragon, she saw it's expression one of concern punctuated with what must have been a question. It wasn't like any human expression, but from the sound Astrid decided that was the only thing it could be.

Was it asking where she was going? No, Hiccup had always gone back to Berk, Toothless had to have known about the village. So what was it...? Oh.

It was asking if she was going to return.

Astrid paused, thinking. She didn't have to. Even if it could fly without assistance, the tail mechanism was broken so it probably wouldn't be able to make it out of the cove. She could go back to the village, back to her life, and pretend. Toothless would waste away, and with it, the last reminder of Hiccup.

She could just forget.

'If something goes wrong...'

She shook her head. There wasn't a sword on Berk Hiccup hadn't sharpened or building he hadn't damaged in some way. Toothless was far from the last reminder of Hiccup, and even if he was Astrid knew it wouldn't be so easy to forget.

"I'll be back," she told Toothless, eventually. She hesitated, trying to think of when she thought she could face him again. In a day? A week? "Soon," she decided, and left without another sound from either of them.

'Just make sure they don't find Toothless.'

"I will, Hiccup," she whispered to the trees, hiking back to the village. "I promise."


	2. All They Have

Astrid's mug cracked, its wooden handle splintering in her hand with the force she slammed it down. "What did you say?"

For anyone else, her tone and the blistering glare that accompanied it would have given pause before an answer was given, a chance to carefully consider their choice of words or even apologize.

Snotlout was not anyone else. "I just said great job killing that Nightmare. What's wrong with that?"

Her stool clattered to the ground, the room growing silent as they watched what she would do. "I'm going for a walk." Shoving Snotlout out of the way, she stomped out the door.

She should have been happy. Killing a Nightmare meant something in this village. She had honor. She had respect.

She'd rather have Hiccup.

She shook her head like the action could chase the thought away. It had been a week, and Hiccup was still a constant fixture in her mind. In every glinting blade, every dry joke, especially every dragon, he was there. Hiccup was everywhere.

Hiccup was gone.

She had the basket of fish fixed to her back before she even realized what she was doing, and began making her way to Toothless' cove before she could talk herself out of it.

"Hey... Toothless," she waved, halfheartedly as she set the fish down. Frigga, now she was speaking to it. Just like Hiccup.

Toothless hummed, which she supposed was as much a greeting as she was going to get, and dived into the food. A look over at his tail confirmed the still broken device, so he couldn't have gone far to hunt. She didn't know what he'd been eating for the past four days.

A twinge of guilt shot through her and she felt she had to speak again. "Sorry it took so long to get back here, I've..." she ran a shaking hand through her hair. "I don't have an excuse. Every time I started going this way, I'd come up with some reason not to. 'It rained last night, so the paths will be slippery, I should wait until they dry.' 'I need to train.' 'I need to wash my Friggan hair.'" She sat roughly on a nearby rock, staring into the sand. "What am I supposed to do now?"

Toothless swiveled, and the damaged tailwing came into view once again. He made a little chirp sound, which she supposed was his helpful suggestion to fix it.

"I can't," she snapped, kicking the offending piece away. "I already said, I'm not Hiccup. You need a blacksmith, not some broken coward viking."

He cooed again, that questioning expression returning, and his tail twitched with restless agitation.

Astrid pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to quiet the hurricane of emotions twisting inside her. Grief, shame, frustration all bubbled like they were going to burst, but just barely she kept them at bay. "I can't understand you," she answered with a weary sigh. "Not just in the noises you make, I really can't understand you. Your best friend is dead and you're worried about, what? A tail?" Roughly, she yanked the contraption off and threw it to the side. "He thought you were his friend."

A clawed hand stomped the ground, followed by a thick growl. Astrid could see green fog gather in Toothless' mouth and skittered backward to avoid the blast. His teeth deployed, all of the dragon's fury bared to her, she felt frozen in place. Her back touched rock, and she squeezed her eyes shut in preparation for the final strike.

It never came.

When she opened her eyes again it was to see Toothless pawing at the discarded false tail, a pitiful whining sound emanating from his throat.

In a moment of clarity, Astrid looked around the cove. Rocks, trees, grass, sand, water, the basket she brought and the tail Hiccup made. "This... is the only thing you have, isn't it? Of Hiccup's, I mean."

Toothless nodded, a sort of strained sadness about his demeanor as he curled around the pitiful thing.

She took a step forward, reaching toward the false tail and he growled, forcing her back. "Please? I just want to see it." The glare continued for a minute, so long Astrid began to worry he would attack her again when, grumbling, he finally moved off it, letting her look.

It truly was Hiccup's work, from the sheer ingenuity to the slightly misaligned bolts, he was there. It wasn't perfect, but she'd seen firsthand it was functional. This was his pride. No matter how many inventions failed, this, the ability to ride a dragon, this worked.

Worked. Past tense.

The anger that had been stewing within her bubbled over, coalescing into a single word.

No.

"Hiccup is dead." Her fists clenched nails biting into the inside of her palms so hard they bled. "I won't let this die, too." Toothless cooed. She still didn't know what it meant, but she supplied her own meaning.

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do; I'm going to find Hiccup's notes, designs, drawings, anything that can tell me how this whole thing's supposed to work, I'm going to cut fresh leather, I'll find some, somehow, and... a smith." Her eyes lit with inspiration and she turned, starting a run toward Berk, calling back. "You need a smith."

A confused Toothless watched her depart, curling around the broken tailfin. He had covered it with a wing when it rained and despite the time, it still smelled like Hiccup. His head lazily looked in the direction she ran, considering.

She smelled a bit like Hiccup, too.

The dragon breathed some gentle fire in a circle around the tailfin and laid down for a nap. She'd be back, he was sure of it now. There was something in her voice when she asked the question, not just sympathy but a sort of understanding.

This, the talfin, the cove, Toothless himself, this was all she had of Hiccup, too.

(]+[)

Gobber was missing a leg. The cluster of nerves and muscle gathered around the metal replacement twinged from time to time, and he was forced to walk with a hobble to keep balance. It was difficult, and the loss in speed had him working in the forge during all but the worst dragon raids, but for the most part he had grown used to it.

Gobber was missing an arm. Apparently after he lost it, he was in a delirious fever for two days. It took time, relearning how to smith with one hand, but eventually he was able to craft a variety of implements to fit into his stub's covering. They were dull replacements for a hand and constantly switching them out was tiring, but this too he grew used to.

Gobber was missing an apprentice. Every command in the forge was met with silence, every sword to sharpen, empty air. Hiccup's apron sat on its peg like a sentinel, waiting for the return of a master that never would. Several times, Gobber would reach toward it to put it away, out of sight, but every time he couldn't bring himself to move it. Everyone told him he'd grow used to it, but he wasn't sure. One more thing shouldn't have made a difference but this? This felt like it hurt the most to lose.

There was a series of sharp raps on the door, breaking him from his latest stupor and opening it revealed a breathless Astrid, leaning on her knees to rest for a moment. "Gobber... teach... me... to smith," she wheezed out between breaths.

He stared at her disbelievingly for a moment, then sighed. "Astrid, ye already killed a berserk Nightmare. Ye'll be a promising young dragon slayer, there's no need to throw tha' away." He laid his real hand on her shoulder. "It won't bring him back," he said, more to himself than her.

She brushed his hand off, shaking her head. "Gobber, Berk needs two smiths and I... I need to do this." He wavered, so she pressed her advantage. "Please? I'll do whatever you say, it's just... this is important."

Finally, he groaned, slapping a hand on his forehead and dragging it down his face. "Aye, alright. Work starts bright and early in the morning, so be here."

"I will. Thanks, Gobber." For a moment, her muscles itched to jump and cheer, or tackle the old blacksmith with a hug, but the moment passed unheeded. It wouldn't be appropriate.

Still, she was grateful, and she couldn't help the smile that graced her features when she departed from the forge. The path down to her house curved by the water, and she allowed her attention to shift outward toward Helheim's Gate.

There was an island of dragons out there, one nearly as big as Berk itself. If she stopped it, there'd be no more raids, no more winters struggling to put food on the table, no more constant fear. But in a fashion quickly becoming annoyingly familiar, the answer as to how lay outside her reach. She shook her head, turning away. "One problem at a time."

"You've been acting weird," a voice halted her gait and the smile she'd been wearing wavered and fell.

Ruffnut leaned against one of the unlit flame pillars, half her face obscured by shadow from the swiftly setting sun.

"What are you doing out so late?" Astrid asked, Ruffnut's whole appearance setting her on edge. Bathed in shadow, the fairer Thorston seemed almost more like a spirit than a person.

"You first, Astrid," she snapped back. "What's the deal? You hate Hiccup throughout all of dragon training, then he gets done-in and you're carrying on worse than Gobber." Astrid winced at the description, and the reminder how she'd treated Hiccup before. "You might've fooled the others, but I've been around my brother too long not to know when something stinks. So spill."

At first, Astrid paled at the accusation. The idea that she'd been keeping Hiccup's secret for so short a time yet already been found out terrified her. But then, just like in the cove, that same anger surged within her. "And who put you in charge of who I can or can't grieve?" She challenged, surprising the girl. "I may not have been the nicest to him all the time but we were friends," her heart gave a twinge she resolutely ignored. "You have no right to say I 'carry on' when he died not fifteen feet from me."

Astrid pushed past the stunned Ruffnut and hurried home, only stopping for a breath when she was already inside. Her legs buckled and she slid down the solid oak door, bringing her knees against her chest like she used to do when she was younger, the sounds of the dragon attacks making her so frightened it was all she could do not to scream at every creak on the roof.

But that was a long time ago. She wasn't scared of dragons anymore.

Toothless baring his teeth, her skittering backward meeting rock, squeezing her eyes shut, the memory flashed in her brain making her breath come fast.

The Nightmare, burning Hiccup alive in seconds right before her eyes as she struggled with the gate, his blackened body unrecognizable even as human anymore.

A red haze as her axe came down on the Nightmare's neck, its monstrous head turning to her, fire brimming past its lips.

Her arms wrapped around her legs, squeezing her knees closer. She wasn't afraid of dragons anymore.

Right?


	3. Forged in Flame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I didn't expect this kind of response for the story, thank you for reading and commenting!

In the first hour of learning to smith, Astrid decided it had a lot in common with axe throwing. In theory it couldn't be simpler, hammer goes up, hammer goes down, metal takes shape and sword is made, just like axe throwing's common sentiment of, 'how hard could it be to throw something?' But, how hard was exactly the problem. In axe throwing, if she threw it too hard she couldn't control the revolutions so she might have struck her target with the handle instead of the blade. She had trained out that habit through practice. In smithing, hitting the metal too hard would make it brittle, breaking it before anything could take shape, much less a sword. She hoped that habit would end through practice as well.

In the second hour of smithing, Astrid began to feel sore, her body complaining from the lack of use it had received the past week. Apparently carrying a basket of fish Hiccup could lift through the forest twice did not quite make par with her usual training regimen. Though, now that she thought of it, how did Hiccup manage to spend so much time in the forge without constantly being too sore to move. Yet another Hiccup mystery to add to the pile, she supposed.

In the third hour, Gobber's blunt criticism and ceaseless hammering grew stale. The heat from the forge seemed to sap her strength with every blow she made to the metal, and her aching bones craved rest more than she could ever remember in her life.

By the fourth hour, she decided smithing had nothing in common with axe throwing. Axe throwing was wind and trees, but this? Cramped quarters and overwhelming, suffocating, heat. 

They reached the fifth hour and Astrid wondered, through the haze of pain and fire, if this is what Hiccup felt before he died.

Her smithing apprenticeship came to an abrupt end as she heaved the morning's meal into a bucket outside. Gobber sighed, placing a hand on her shaking shoulder. "Go home, lass. No more smithing, today."

Exhausted, aching down to her bones, Astrid staggered home. Finally, she made it onto her rough straw mattress and slept like the dead.

No one saw her for the rest of the day. When she woke next, the light that usually filtered through her windows had gone dark, and there was a stillness to the silent air she was wholly unused to.

Sighing, she slumped back into bed, covering her eyes with an arm. "What am I doing?" She wondered aloud. Not a smith, barely a viking, she wasn't even sure she could kill dragons anymore when just the thought made her sick to her stomach. So what worth was she?

She thought of Toothless, wrapped around that pitiful broken tailfin, unable to fly, to leave, to hunt. She supposed, in some strange way, she was worth something to him. A dragon's last hope of survival rested on her.

Without her, Toothless would die, too.

Astrid slept again, the thought rattling in her brain.

(]+[)

Gobber didn't expect to see her again, not in the morning, not right outside the forge, not when her first experience with smithing was hours long without so much as a break.

He didn't do it to be cruel, just to show her how backbreaking the work could be. There was no reason she had to throw away her status and position as a warrior because of some misplaced guilt over Hiccup's death. He knew that's what it was; he'd felt it himself enough already. He thought that if he showed her the long hours, exhausting work, and sweltering heat, she'd give up and leave him in peace.

But she was there, eyes burning brighter than any nadder's fire. For a minute, he wasn't even sure she was real, but then she walked past him into the forge and sat down at her place yesterday. "What'll we work on, today?" She asked, hammer already in hand.

Gobber's expression darkened as he sat down and attached his own hammer hand. He'd forgotten for a moment, mind dwelling on Hiccup, that even for her age she was a viking through and through. Stubbornness issues, indeed.

"Same as yesterday, lass. Let's see if you can last a little longer, eh?" Her eyes widened, face flashing with hurt for an instant before that determination from before took its place.

She spun the hammer in her hand, lifting it up. "Let's see," she grunted as the hammer slammed down on the metal, the first of many such strikes.

She made it six and a half hours before fainting in the forge. Gobber felt his heart wrench at the sight, her hammer clattering to the floor as she collapsed.

Carrying her out of the heat of the forge and into the open air, he found a bucket with a ladle and slowly began pouring water over her chapped and bleeding lips, then into her mouth when she opened it.

"Gobber," a voice shouted from across the square. He didn't even need to look up to know Stoick the Vast was on his way toward him. "What is this?" He gestured to the Hofferson girl, then barked at a passerby hauling straw before Gobber could even respond. "Fetch the Goethi." The man dropped the load he was carrying jumping to comply with the village chief's demand. Stoick bent down on one knee as Gobber continued carefully feeding the downed girl water, her unconsciously drinking it as it came. "What happened?"

"Fainted working in the forge," Gobber reported, eyes trained on his task.

"What was she doing in the forge?" Stoick's voice rumbled, a low thunder that made Gobber consider his next answer carefully.

"She asked me to teach her to smith," he said, and quickly followed it up before Stoick could respond. "I said no, obviously, but she insisted and I figured if she learned how hard the work could be, she'd go back to dragon fighting, but even after yesterday she still came back this morning."

"What happened yesterday?" His expression held a silent assurance that they'd be talking about this more later.

"Worked for five hours and puked in a bucket," he reported.

Stoick turned and yelled an order to one of the teenagers passing through the square. "Thorsten. Fetch some cold stew and bring it here. Quickly, boy." Tuffnut went running and Gobber shot a questioning look to the chief.

"Why the stew?" He asked, eyebrows furrowed.

"Oh use your head, Gobber," Stoick snapped. "Yesterday she comes to the forge early, throws up, goes home to bed, today she comes here early and gets to work. Look at her skin, her cheeks. She's been running on no food for two days."

Now that he mentioned it, her skin had been a bit pale, and her cheeks had begun developing a hollowness, subtle but clearly visible. "But why didn't she say anything?"

"Maybe you can ask her," he said, gruffly. "She's coming to."

Astrid's eyes opened, dried out and bloodshot from the forge as she looked up at Gobber and Stoick. "Wha' happened?" She mumbled, reaching a hand up to rub her eyes, hoping to get some moisture back into them.

"What happened is you skipped six meals to play with Gobber in the forge," Stoick responded, gruffly, reaching out to take a bowl from the returning Tuffnut and handing it to her. "Eat."

Astrid complied, slowly chewing on the meat and vegetables mixed into the broth. Her stomach strained at the sudden intrusion, but she ignored it.

"Lass, why didn't you say anything?" Gobber asked, setting the water aside.

Astrid tipped the bowl up, drinking the rest of the broth before setting it aside with a shrug. "I wasn't thinking about it. After the first day, everything hurt so much, my stomach was the last thing I was thinking about."

Gobber shook his head, helplessly. "But you still came here?"

"I had to," she shouted, then quieted as she realized what she'd done. Looking away, her hands clenching into fists and unclenching, she finally added. "I made a promise."

Seeing her face, half starved and worked to the bone, yet still spilling over with determination, his own began reflecting the same thing. "Stoick, I've decided to take on an apprentice." Gobber wrapped an arm around her shoulder, dragging her next to him. "She may not have any natural talent for it, but she's gone through two days of the toughest smithing I can think of and still wants to do more. I cannae turn down grit like that when it comes knocking at my door."

Stoick's expression didn't move, but there was a shadow in his eyes that belied his iron control. Without a word, he stood and began walking away, only speaking as he left. "It's your forge," he answered without inflection. "Do what you want with it."

Astrid watched him go, the chief of the village, the man who kept them safe and organized, a father who'd just lost his son. Now she was trying to take his son's place.

She shook her head, vehemently. It wasn't like that. She wasn't replacing Hiccup, she was helping him, helping Toothless. She couldn't just tell him that, though. She couldn't tell anyone.

Gobber was right by her side, Tuffnut a little off to the left, other villagers beginning to gather at the commotion, yet Astrid felt a chill like she was standing alone on a mountaintop. It felt like the reality of her situation, her promise, had finally struck her.

She couldn't tell anyone, not what she was doing, where she was going, and definitely not who she was going to see. She would have to lie, to everyone, forever.

Gods, is this what Hiccup felt like when he was taking care of Toothless? It hurt worse than even those two days of working ragged in the forge. The realization burrowing inside her gut and sitting there like a stone, unmoving.

"Don't mind Stoick, lass," Gobber said, misunderstanding her sour expression. "He just needs a bit of time to get used to things." He sighed, rising slowly to his feet. "Suppose we all do." He walked back to the forge, poking his head out the door and calling out to her. "Tomorrow I'll start actually teaching you something, for now take the rest of the day off and get some more food into ya." With that, the blacksmith returned to his occupation, the steady sounds of his hammer echoing through the square once again.

Tuffnut offered a hand to Astrid, helping her to her feet when she took it. She felt the need to say something, but what exactly she had no idea. "Thanks," she eventually decided on. "I think fainting from hunger is officially added to one of my most embarrassing moments."

Tuffnut waved a hand, dismissing the thought. "Nah, Ruffnut and me usually do it for a bet every couple years, see who can go the longest without food, so I'm pretty sure one more collapsing teen won't make that much of a difference."

He wasn't joking, his expression was completely serious when he told her. She laughed anyway. She had to. The alternative was crying and that was something she refused to do when anyone could see her. "What do you even bet?" She asked through wheezing chuckles.

He shrugged. "Eh, stupid stuff, mostly. Favors, dares, that sort of thing. Sometimes if Ruff's upset about something but doesn't wanna get called a sissy for saying it, I'll bet something like secrets or telling what's on her mind, and she always does the same for me."

Astrid wiped her eyes, sending a smile to the teen. "Thanks, Tuff. I needed that."

"Hey, maybe sometime you could do it with us," Tuffnut offered.

Astrid held up her hands like it would ward off the suggestion. "Thanks, but I don't think starving myself again would be a very good idea."

"Pssh, that's not the only thing we do. We see who can hold their breath the longest, who can win in a fight, who can throw a hammer closest to Snotlout without waking him up, all kinds of things." His eyes seemed to glaze over with the fond memories.

Astrid was just about to politely decline again, when something stopped her, that stone in her gut gave an uncomfortable wriggle, and she couldn't say the words. Maybe, she thought, she doesn't have to say no quite yet. "That sounds like fun," she admitted, blinking like she'd surprised even herself by saying so. "I'll take you up on that, sometime."

Tuff grinned and began resuming his daily activity of mainly lollygagging, with renewed fervor.

Astrid just shook her head watching him go, her smile eventually fading. That stone before hadn't gone away. She'd have to lie to him, too.

The Goethi arrived, practically dragging her by the ear back home to eat something, but she went without protest.

She didn't know how long it would take before she was able to forge the pieces to a new tailfin. She didn't care. Whatever it took, she would do it. Her smithing was handled.

Now where did Hiccup keep his notes?


	4. The Choices we Make

It had been a month. Astrid worked in the forge every day, as every drop of water she drank seemed to leak from her pores at the same rate. The work had gotten easier, but the heat no more bearable. The first snowfalls would arrive soon, and Gobber assured her she'd relish the heat, then. Astrid wasn't so sure. She'd always preferred the bite of Winter to the suffocating Summer months.

The imminent snow made her worried, however. Berk's assumption was that the dragons curled into that nest of theirs for the winter, waiting it out while the Vikings did the same, but if Toothless couldn't return, what would he do?

The idle thought that maybe he could stay in the forge wriggled in her mind but she dismissed it immediately. He'd be put on a pike faster than she could say 'dragon' and her with him, most likely. With the way she'd been avoiding most of the teenagers lately, they probably wouldn't even speak out against it.

Well, she'd been avoiding most of them, at any rate. Snotlout had discovered fairly early that she'd be in or around the forge during the day, and had chosen to use this knowledge to endlessly pester her.

"So then I got to thinking," he continued on the latest of his neverending rambling monologues.

"That's dangerous," Astrid quipped, lacking the energy or focus to make a true threat while she worked on a deceptively tricky cart axle.

"You've already killed a dragon," her stomach gave a tug but she pounded the metal harder, ignoring it as Snotlout continued. "And I'm totally gonna kill, like, five in the next raid, so I think we should do it."

"Do what?" She asked, continuing her hammering with only one ear and half a mind on the conversation. It was better to do that when Snotlout was involved: it tended to make things more fair.

"We should talk to our parents about a betrothal."

Her hammer struck the anvil, the jagged sound vibrating through both of them. "What?" She breathed, disbelievingly.

"We're going to be the greatest dragon slayers ever. Tuffnut and Fishlegs can't compete with that and they know it." Snotlout frowned, his brow furrowed like he was confused she would even question it. "I mean, who else do you have?"

Her hammer clattered to the ground, forgotten, and Gobber came out of the back room to see what the ruckus was about.

Astrid's mind was spinning, each thought blistering past before she could grab it.

"You alright, lass?" Gobber asked, laying a hand on her shoulder.

Her tongs fell to the floor with the hammer and she slipped from his hand in a daze. "I have to go," she said, vaguely, backing away. Snotlout reached out, as if to say something, but as soon as she cleared the forge, she broke out into a sprint, dashing through the treelines toward Toothless' cove.

She didn't even make it halfway before needing to stop, her legs burning and side stitched with the effort of the run.

It had been a month since the last time she'd trained. Gods, when was the last time she was this weak? When was the last time her stomach burned from a hard day's work, desperate for a meal to fill her growing bones with iron? When was the last time she truly felt like a dragon slayer? Like a viking? And if she didn't feel like those, then what had she become now?

She staggered forward, cursing her weakness as she picked her way through the forest. Already a cold wind was brewing, signalling a storm, but it wasn't cold enough. Not to chill the heat in her heart, in her cheeks, no. Not nearly cold enough.

Betrothal? With Snotlout?

She shook her head like it would clear the thought, but all it did was make her heart beat faster. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, not like love. It wasn't like being in the sky with Hiccup, skimming the water's edge at extraordinary speeds. It was like after, seeing that monstrous dragon queen, that Red Death. It was like watching Hiccup enter the arena, promising things wouldn't go wrong. No, her heart didn't beat with love. It beat with dread.

But he wasn't wrong.

She scratched the side of her head, feeling the hairs in her braid begin to come loose, then roughly tore away her kransen, throwing it as far as she could so she could scratch further. It was a nervous habit she hadn't adopted since she was a child, and the kransen she was supposed to only wear on special occasions had become something of a deterrent. When she'd taken to wearing it every day, when all the individual issues and concerns of childhood had melded into a single purpose, her nerves had cooled.

But that single purpose was dragonslaying, and with that tumbling apart all those troubles were returning to the fore, and the habit with it.

Tuffnut had no head for combat, unless you counted it in a literal sense, and his reckless streak was a pilskudd long. No matter how he was as a person, everyone in Berk knew he was all but marked for death in a dragon raid sooner or later.

Fishlegs had the mind and strength for dragon slaying, but none of the grit. He was more likely to scream and run when faced with a dragon than to stand and fight. That and his constant references to the statistics in the book and those silly cards made her teeth grind far more than Hiccup's stumbling inadequacy.

Snotlout was the obvious choice, the only choice.

She'd never thought about it before, but she knew this wasn't the conclusion she would have drawn. Because somewhere in the back reaches of her mind, she thought that Hiccup would grow out of the silliness, of his childhood crush and gangly limbs, she had the same hope his father did, that he would be a real viking one day. And, she had maybe held onto the slim hope that when he did, she would be the obvious choice for him.

She winced and pulled her hand back, seeing red beneath her fingernails. There was a reason she'd kicked this habit before.

She made it to her feet again slowly, not sure when she'd stopped to sit, and walked over to her fallen kransen, winking in the sunlight like it was mocking her. In viking tradition, kransens were symbols of youth, unmarried, to be removed and eventually passed on to her own daughters when the time came for her to be wed.

She slipped it back on, feeling the cool leather slide over her hair once again, and the patch of scalp on the side where she had scratched the skin raw in her ruminations.

All this talk of marriage, of her future, she was growing older. So why did she feel more like a frightened little girl than ever before?

She slid down the slope into Toothless' cove, holding up her hands as the beast sniffed all around her, humming its usual greeting.

"No fish today, Toothless," she told him, and he cooed in response, a sound she could pin down was asking a question, even if she had to guess what question that was. "Because I didn't have time. This whole trip was kind of... sudden." Another coo. "Yeah, I'm fine." She looked at the dragon's face, so expressive, even more than some vikings she knew and bit her lip. He didn't believe her.

"Okay," she admitted. "I'm not fine." She reached up like she was going to start scratching her head again, but stilled her hand and laid it atop Toothless' nose instead, feeling the warm breaths he took skitter over her skin. They'd touched before, she'd felt his glassy scales when he prodded her for food, when she'd ridden on his back with Hiccup, but not like this. She'd never been the one to reach out before.

Toothless hummed, like those greetings from before and she didn't know what it meant. It didn't matter. He was there, that's what was important.

"Snotlout was talking about marriage today." There wasn't venom in her voice anymore, or fear. Somehow, her palm warming by a dragon's breath, feeling its scales moving and rippling under her hand, Snotlout seemed very far away. "I don't want to marry him."

He chirped like what she said was obvious even to him and Astrid couldn't stifle her laugh.

"I guess Hiccup told you about him, huh?" She moved her hand, beginning to stroke the scales on his head and he curled up, eyes closing in contentment, but giving an affirmative chirp, letting her know he was still listening. "Yeah, I don't like him either. Between the constant bragging and annoying flirting, I'm surprised he's still able to eat when his mouth is always open."

Toothless cooed, another question, and she guessed at the words once again.

"Because I don't have a choice," she told him, hand clenching into a fist. "I have to marry someone, it's my duty to the tribe." Toothless opened one eye and Astrid carefully unfurled her hand, resuming the petting. "I love Berk, but lately everything's been moving so fast, I can't keep up with it all." She leaned down until she was lying on Toothless' head, hugging him tightly. "I wish I could go as fast as everything else seems to. I wish..." she wished she could feel the wind rushing past her, filling her lungs so quickly it felt like she could scream forever, for as long as she needed to. "I wish I could fly." Toothless chirped and she laughed again, scratching behind his ears. "I know; you wish you could fly, too. I've been looking for Hiccup's designs, but I checked here, the forge, and the only other place they could be is the Chief's house." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Toothless. I can't go there. Not this soon."

The dragon hummed again, the action rippling through her body, calming her heartbeat. She wished she knew what it meant, but it was comforting all the same.

She stayed there a while, in the dragon's warm embrace, and she didn't even realize she was falling asleep as Toothless wrapped his wings around her. Ever since the day in the arena, her sleep had been spotty, and adding on waking up early to work in the forge, she only managed a handful of hours every night. Even those were plagued with nightmares.

Her eyes fluttered closed as Toothless' rumbling breaths became her lullaby and she fell into a sleep devoid of dreams. She was in the clutches of a dragon, yet she'd never felt safer.

When her eyes finally opened again, she didn't recognize where she was for a few moments, and only when her hands gripped leathery wings instead of blankets did the memories return.

With a gasp, she tumbled from the makeshift nest the dragon had made, and scrabbled her way to the shore, shaking. Toothless cooed, but she could barely hear it through the pounding of blood in her ears.

She knew she wasn't in danger, that Toothless wouldn't hurt her. She knew that even the show of teeth he gave her after she'd yelled at him about the tail was just to scare her. But in the haze of waking up, she couldn't think about any of that, only that a dragon was right there, and for a moment she thought she would die.

Toothless slowly unfurled himself from his sleeping position and padded over to her, nuzzling her arm with his nose. With great effort, she sucked in another breath and unclenched her fists. "It's fine, Toothless. I'm fine."

She wondered if it sounded as fake to him as it did to her.

She looked up at the sky and the pale pinks and yellows streaked across it. For a moment she thought it was sunset, but the colors were off. "Sunrise," she muttered, grimacing. Stoick had probably already arranged search parties after she'd run into the wood.

Wait, search parties? She stood, clutching her head for a moment as she saw dizzy spots from doing it so suddenly. "Toothless, you have to hide. I'm going to run back to Berk so the Chief can call off the search, but it'll take time and I don't want anyone accidentally stumbling on to you, okay?" She looked into his eyes, searching for understanding and only relaxed when she found it. "Thanks, Toothless." With a final pet and a smile, she turned, running back toward the village.

Fishlegs was close. Far too close. "Astrid," he called when she was only steps away from the entrance to Toothless' cove. "The whole village is out looking for you. What happened?"

"Snotlout," she answered, trying not to sound as panicked as she felt. "He was saying something stupid again, and I went into the forest to train, lost track of time and decided sleeping it out was a better idea than stumbling through the forest when it's pitch black out."

It was a good explanation, reasonable. But Fishlegs was nothing if not annoyingly perceptive. "Where's your axe?"

Astrid looked down at her hands, like her axe would suddenly appear if she willed it. "I was in the forge, I didn't have my axe with me."

"Then what were you training?"

The words hung in the air, still. Astrid had the answer. It was perched on her lips like a raven on a branch, but she couldn't utter it. Seconds passed without an answer.

Think of an answer, she screamed at herself. Say something. Anything.

Still, she couldn't speak.

He turned away. "We should head back," he said, simply, and started walking. After a few moments, she followed.

"My dad," Fishlegs broke the silence several minutes of walking later, "loved to fish."

Astrid blinked at the non-sequitur. "To fish?"

He nodded. "Loved it. He was doing it pretty much whenever he got a free moment, and when I got big enough, he started taking me along, too. I hated fishing, hated the smell, the feel of the bait, how boring sitting in a boat waiting for a bite was, I couldn't stand any of it. I'd pitch such a fit whenever we did it, but he kept dragging me along and teaching me how it worked, and I learned, even if I didn't want to." A shadow passed over his expression, darkening it into a grim frown. "He died in a dragon raid a few years ago."

Astrid felt her blood run cold. Did he know about Toothless? Was he going to turn her in to Chief Stoick because she was harboring a dragon?

Fishlegs continued. "Some time after he died, I tried fishing again, and it felt different. I'd hated it, growing up, but it was something special to my dad, you know? Something we did together. Doing it after he was gone, it kind of felt like he was there again, like I was closer to him." He turned to look at her, expression not the damning hatred she feared, but one closer to sad understanding. "It's Hiccup, right?"

She stopped moving. "What?"

"Hiccup kept disappearing in here, and he'd never tell anyone why. Except, I get the feeling he told you, and now you're keeping it up, whatever it is, because... well, because it feels like he's there with you again."

Astrid looked away, feeling a hollowness in her stomach disconnected from hunger. "It's not the same," she said quietly.

"No, it isn't." Fishlegs scratched the back of his head, uncomfortably. "I don't know what was going on between you two, but I do know that whatever it is, it was private. I won't pry, you have my word."

She wanted to hug him. She slugged his shoulder instead. "Thanks, Fish."

As they neared the village once more, he flashed her a friendly grin. "You should be careful spending so much time out in the woods, though," he warned, half-jokingly. "All that time with no one to talk to: you might go mad."

Before she could respond, they broke through the treeline and Fishlegs signalled Stoick who bellowed that Astrid had been found. They sent one or two runners into the forest to gather up the searchers, but she wouldn't be surprised if they'd all heard already with the force of the Chief's shout.

She was going to speak to him when a hand on her shoulder stopped her. "Astrid, I'm glad you're safe." Her father, taller than most vikings, but slimmer as well, with eyebrows and beard a thick bushy blonde. "But let's talk about what you were doing out in the woods." He turned and maintained a steady pace back to their house. With a last look at Stoick, Astrid hurried after him.

The Hofferson Patriarch had no designs on being chief, but there was a quiet authority to his voice, nonetheless. This was especially true when dealing with his children. "Why where you in the woods?"

"I needed to clear my head," Astrid answered. She was going to add, 'I was training,' but decided not to. Her father wasn't quite as perceptive as Fishlegs, but she wasn't about to take chances.

"Why?" He asked, a single eyebrow raised.

"Snotlout was bothering me in the forge, he mentioned," she hesitated. "He mentioned the possibility of a betrothal."

"Snotlout is strong." His voice held no inflection.

"Snotlout is an idiot," she countered.

"Fishlegs is smart," he said with an easy shrug.

"Fishlegs is a coward," she snapped, groaning. "I've already had this conversation with myself. That's why I was in the Hel-damned woods."

"For an entire night?" His head quirked, but the tone in his voice hadn't changed, nor had the volume.

"Yes." She tried to match his tone, but her eyes glinted with furious defiance.

"I don't like you working in the forge," he said, bluntly.

Astrid's stomach dropped. As her father, he could end her apprenticeship at any time. "Please, d-"

He held up a hand, silencing her. "I don't like you working in the forge, I don't like you disappearing into the forest, and I especially don't like your eating habits of late. It's like you're pretending to be that Haddock boy."

"I am not Hiccup," Astrid protested.

"Then why have you been avoiding your friends?" He accused, voice rising for the first time in the conversation. "Why are you up at all hours searching through papers like they hold the key to Yggdrasil? Why, when Snotlout mentions a betrothal you're against, do you run away instead of challenging him to a fight?" He slams a hand down on the table, rattling the sturdy wood. "You're a great warrior, Astrid. You don't need to be someone else." His voice fell quiet again and the rage in his eyes softened. "You don't need to be Hiccup. Just be Astrid; that's always been enough for me."

But being Astrid wasn't enough, not to fix Toothless' tail, not to give him a chance to survive the Winter. Axe throwing, dragon slaying, destruction wasn't enough. She had to think, to create.

Astrid looked away, no longer able to meet her father's eyes.

He stood, slowly, towering over her, then walked to a basket on the hearth and set it down beside her. "This came today."

Hesitantly, she uncovered the top and lifted up the dark red leather, so smooth and familiar it made her shudder. "What is this?"

"Nightmare skin," he answered and she gripped it tighter. "It is tradition for the slayer to incorporate some piece of it into their armor."

He moved to the door, but stopped when his hand reached the handle. "If you keep digging up the dead every time you think it'll make you feel better, you'll end up with draugrs."

With that final token of advice, he left.

Astrid clutched the Nightmare skin tighter. It was a living creature. It breathed, and moved, and thought. It could probably speak, just like Toothless, even if she couldn't understand it, the capacity was there. The intelligence. It could have been a friend.

Now it was a corpse.

Why didn't she feel bad? Hiccup would have, she was sure.

Astrid put the skin down, eyes trailing to the window, up the highest hill where the Chief's house lay. Somewhere, in those walls, the designs to Toothless' tailfin lay. She'd been putting it off, though out of respect or fear she wasn't sure. The storm she felt brewing earlier was on the horizon, now, and it was going to be a big one.

Disturbing the Chief's home, rifling around in his possessions was a serious taboo, doing the same to a grieving father even moreso, but Stoick was both at once.

Astrid sighed. She was running out of time, she could feel it. But how far could she go? How low would she sink just to touch the sky again?

'We should talk to our parents about a betrothal,' Snotlout's words echoed in her mind, taunting her. On this little island of Berk, he was her only option.

But there were other islands.

She'd heard tales from travelers and books of islands far to the south that never felt the full sting of Winter. New villages, new people, a place Toothless could survive. By boat, it would take months, but by wing?

Her eyes turned to the Chief's house once again.

It was a dangerous thought, and as Astrid returned to the forge and began her work anew, the thought grew until it was all she could think about.

The Chief's house, she decided. Tonight.


End file.
